I entered the story below in the Blogapolloza contest on Waiters Today and I won 2nd place…$250. Many thanks for voting for me! I’m using the money to buy a Kindle and get my son’s dog, Arlo, neutered. I’m excited about the Kindle, Arlo isn’t so excited about the ball chopping.

Anyway…just as the people in my story behaved badly when faced with a special gift, some of the members of Waiters Today showed their ridiculous sides when offered cash prizes. One guy cheated by hiring a company to get Facebook “likes” for him…I’m not sure what that means, but he had around 50 page views and 1000 “likes”. So he was disqualified. He defended himself by saying he was “driven” to win. I didn’t realize “driven” was synonymous with “cheater”. Then the insults and threats started flying and before you could say “Sore Loser” all the trolls revealed themselves.

It’s nice to know that wherever you go on the internet, people stay the same when they are protected by anonymity.

Christmas parties are a drag. In my experience, a Christmas party is two or three hours trapped at a table trying to make polite conversation with people I avoid at work . I’ve attended parties where my fervent wish was to choke on a chicken bone so EMS could rescue me from the misery of forced cheer.

I viewed the Cowboy Christmas Party with the same anxiety and dread. I knew there was going to be a dinner, an open bar, a gift exchange and some games. Mind you, the only games I wanted to play with the majority of my coworkers were the kinds of games cats play with mice. Right before they eat them.

It turned out, the atmosphere of the Cowboy Christmas Party was like a typical bar. People mingled, ate and drank while the jukebox played. The after dinner games were fun with some really great and occasionally expensive prizes. It was the best Christmas party I’d ever been to.

Then came the gift steal.

We were told to bring a $10 gift. I brought a rooster tea kettle. Someone else brought a cooler full of little bottles of booze. There were some homemade items. One guy brought some fish balls made from halibut he caught in Alaska. There was also a bunch of crap.

The object of the gift steal is everyone draws a number. The person with Number 1 picks the first gift and unwraps it. The person with Number 2 can either take that gift or pick a different one. Number 3 can take either of the first gifts or choose an unwrapped one. And so on.

This is an average game when people are sober. By the time we got around to the gift steal, 98% of the participants were trashed, and the 7 drunkest people wanted three things: the fish balls, the cooler of booze (hello?! open bar) and the rooster tea kettle. The gift steal was over within 15 minutes for all the sober and slightly drunk people. The fight for the tea kettle, the fish balls and the cooler of booze entertained the rest of us for more than an hour.

Alliances formed.

Secret deals were made.

It’s possible firstborn children were offered up.

Grumpy wanted the fish balls.

Dopey wanted the fish balls (but only because she didn’t want anyone else to have them).

Doc wanted the rooster tea kettle.

Bashful, Doc’s wife, wanted to use the tea kettle to bargain for the fish balls to give to Grumpy. (Doc didn’t care if Grumpy got the fish balls. He wanted the rooster tea kettle.)

Happy wanted the cooler of booze. (Strange because she brought it. If she didn’t want to give it away, why bring it?)

Grumpy and Bashful held each other and cried while they struggled to work out their next move.

Happy took the fish balls.

Snow White passed out and fell off her bar stool.

Doc got the tea kettle and hid it in the restaurant.

Sleepy stole the cooler of booze, and he and Sneezy rejoiced at their win.

Grumpy took the fish balls.

Happy, red faced and angry, stole the cooler of booze and left Sleepy & Sneezy with a kid’s night light.

In the stunned silence of the game finally ending, the man who brought the fish balls yelled to the defeated brother and sister team, “Way to go! You’ll be lucky to get a hand job with that.”

It was an absurd hour; crying over fish balls, fighting for a cooler of booze while at an open bar, drunks trying to plot and plan, but it was just the train wreck I needed. Years later I still laugh until my sides ache thinking about the tears and recriminations of the gift steal.